It seems like everybody wants to be a mystic. The mystical way is usually taken to be that of the extreme ascetic: your stereotypical bone-thin, gaunt-eyed, cave-dwelling kind of saint. That way may well have its place, but a path for the more everyday mystic is pointed to by Richard Mouw who writes in his Praying at Burger King that:
"I seldom find myself in a praying mood while sitting in a restaurant. But I typically don't pray because I am feeling especially 'spiritual.' If I had to wait for those moods to set in, I wouldn't pray very often!" [1]
Mouw goes on to draw the analogy between greeting or recognizing the presence of a person and recognizing the presence of God, noting that when we see someone we know, we don't usually ignore them because we don't feel like greeting them, but bring ourselves to greet the person because their very presence obliges us.
How does this relate to God? If God is everywhere all the time, we should be continually recognizing his presence. True, we should. This is clearly the impulse behind the scriptural imperative to pray without ceasing and the various forms of life that have tried to take this seriously. But alas, most of us struggle to focus on God for more than a minute without distraction.
Michael Himes writes in The Mystery of Faith: An Introduction to Catholicism that the basic idea behind everything from corporate worship to prayer is what he calls the sacramental principle: the idea that if something is true at all times and in all places one must pay attention to it at some time, and in some place. A finite human being just cannot attend to the infinite but in a timely way. (Moreover, this 'condition' of human experience should not, from a Christian perspective, be seen as simply negative but part of their originally good createdness. [2]) This picture of trying to recognize the infinity of God in some particular way is exactly what is given us in the image of someone like Professor Mouw trying to reach a momentary awareness of God sitting in a restaurant - a 'worldly' distracting Burger King of all places.
But isn't this type of activity, either greeting an acquaintance with a smile when you really wish they'd go away, or bowing one's head and praying when one's mind is anywhere but with God, just what we call hypocrisy? Well, it can be. The trap of hypocrisy is an ever-present danger for any of humanity's higher aims whether they be moral or spiritual. It is just false though to say that the choice is between either hypocritical pretending to be what one really isn't and just doing whatever the heck one feels like.
The other option is to act the way one wants to become. [3]
So a spiritual activity becomes hypocritical then, not when one has mixed feelings about it - otherwise spirituality would be only for the already perfect, but when it becomes the end in itself. Jesus compared people who evinced this kind of religion to white-washed tombs. But spiritual actions can also be a means to an end, a way of exercising an impulse one wants to become more and more spontaneous. It's no accident we call something like prayer a spiritual practice, because it is nothing other than training oneself to be aware of God's presence more fully and more consistently. [4]
This is why the discipline of prayer at fixed times, according to the clock or events like meals or waking and sleeping, is so important. It recognizes the infinity of God by immersing oneself more consciously into time as a way of reaching beyond it, and growing in awareness of that which is outside of time. The other option, of being 'spiritual' when one feels like it, far from getting us to God, just makes us more in thrall to ourselves and our own agendas.
To return to the comparison with a friend: we all recognize the difference between a friend we only like to see when we're in the right mood, and the deep friendship that is as important and as appreciated in the hard times as in the good. (Marriage should embody the ideal of the human relationship here.) What kind of a god would it be that was only there when we felt like turning to him? Truly that god would be one of our own making.
1. p.4
2. see Smith, James K.A., The Fall of Interpretation
3. I think there's a lot that could be said, if it hasn't been already, relating Christian ethics of character as in Hauerwas, and the theology of spiritual formation.
4. For further reflection on the spiritual life as training, see Willard, Dallas, The Divine Conspiracy
Friday, June 08, 2007
Everday Mysticism
Saturday, July 08, 2006
Attend to the truth: A Beginning and Mantra
I plan to use quotes or brief selections I come across in my reading to bounce off of in order to spur some incidental thinking. The first quote is from Debra Rienstra's recent So Much More: an Invitation to Christian Spirituality. There are of course countless beautiful and inspiring words to draw on from down through the centuries. The reason I'm giving this quote the role of launch pad and mantra for this blog is partially because it is so beautiful and so poignant, but partially also because of happenstance. It just happened to be one of the most interesting things I read in the 24 hours before starting this blog.
So without further ado, here's Ms. Rienstra:
"Perhaps, you might propose, all notions of the transcendent are equally far from an astoundingly incomprehensible truth. In that case you could indeed say that all religions lead to God or are equally mistaken about God. The other viable possibility is this: no matter how astoundingly incomprehensible the truth, some notions represent a more accurate perception than others. I live by this latter option, because it seems to me that the minute you grant any notion of truth at all, it follows as a matter of human dignity that we ought to pursue this truth as ardently as we can. Perhaps we stumble; perhaps we are limited in our perceptions; but we ought to try. After all, we live by various notions of truth whether we attend to them or not; better therefore to attend." p. 8
What struck me about this passage besides the obvious beauty of it (don't you think - even if you disagree with the substance?), is that it occurs within a sub-heading called "Spiritual but not Religious". The whole phenomenon, perhaps even movement, of religionless spirituality, and what motivates it, is something that I've wrestled with putting into words before. So, while on the one hand I was a little annoyed to find that someone had already dealt with the topic so thoroughly, and with such apparent ease - taking up less than two pages; on the other hand I experienced the excitement of that old familiar sense of recognition; of seeing laid out perfectly, thoughts which had banging around in my head but which I had not been able get nailed down. I could barely suppress shouting "Amen!".
If I can restate her point less elegantly, Rienstra seems to be arguing basically that it is more respectful of someone else's faith to disagree with them, than it is to just flippantly assume they believe the same things as you do. For many, disagreements over religious beliefs amount to nothing more than tasteless criticisms and useless arguments. Certainly inter-faith discussions contain many criticisms that are tasteless and many arguments that are useless, but there is a world of difference between charitable debate and fearful shouting matches. What those who want to discount, or at least down play, differences between faiths, fear above all is being judgmental. (As Rienstra also says, this fear does stem from some of the best human impulses.) After all, we are told to "judge not". What Rienstra seems to be saying though, is that it is ultimately much more judgmental of another's set of beliefs to not take seriously how it differs from yours and thus how at least one of the two of you has something wrong, than it is to say everything is in fundamental agreement. If someone were to tell me that Christian teaching consists of basically the same thing as all the other religions, I would feel a bit patronized. If you don't grant me the dignity to even theoretically choose wrongly, then you have taken away my ability to choose at all.
So while Rientstra is primarily addressing the age-old issue of religious pluralism, I'm interested in how her thought applies within the Christian community. If truth between religions matter then truth within a religion matters, and we should attend to it too. This is not to say that the only way to attend seriously to the truth is by formulating pure doctrine and excluding from the Church everyone who is in error. Obviously we are not able to do this, and probably shouldn't even want to. But that does not mean that the opposite is true and that no lines should ever be drawn. On what issues and how tightly to define these boundaries are always the trickiest issues, but that's not even what I'm getting at here. For me the mantra: "We all live by various notions of truth whether we attend to them or not; better therefore to attend." is relevant for those of us who feel that itch to pursue theological questions. Reading theology is for me a kind of devotional practice, and also a way of trying to live out at least one quarter of the Greatest Commandment. I say all this because I sometimes get the impression that some Christians look suspiciously at those of us who enjoy reading abstract or esoteric books of theology. As if we're needlessly complicating the simple faith of Jesus or even somehow heretically flirting with earning our salvation through the 'work' of study or contemplation. The important part of the quote is that we all "live by" different truths. As a professor of mine used to put it: "Ideas have legs." The fact is, obscure questions matter greatly to the Church and to individuals in their everyday lives because they affect in myriad unknown ways how we live out our lives together. Attending to that pursuit of truth in my own small way is what I aim to do with this space.
